Pressure Cracks, Icebergs and Healing Our Generational Traumas

"Parenting in short, is a dance of the generations. Whatever affected one generation but has not fully resolved will be passed on to the next." 

Gabor Mate

Good morning from my wee office in the tiny lakeside hamlet of Joussard Alberta. Really this is my sanctuary of peaceful reflection. Everyday I watch the eagles riding the wind currents and the fishermen heading out onto the lake. Today from my window I am fascinated by the large blue iceberg that has risen out of the pressure crack in the ice. The vehicles carefully inching along around the crack as not to shake the ice causing greater upheaval. At any moment the ice could open and swallow anyone who dared to disturb the pressure cooker. I am the human equivalent to the horrible upheaval that can come from too much pressure. For the first half of my life I lived every moment under an overwhelming weight which I couldn't explain. I know now the weight was the legacy of all of the emotional wounds that my grandparents and parents had never healed. They were ordinary people who suffered trauma in a time so practical that emotional wounds didn't matter. That trauma later would drip down over all generations to come and would become the normal everyday existence for so many.

Imagine for a minute a boy named John who, for no making of his own, was the only child of a young mother running from an abusive husband. She made her way to Canada and married the first practical solution that ensured her survival in a new land. That man would accept his new bride into his already busy family, however, John was not accepted. He became the scapegoat and love was not shown in his formative years. Then one day John steps on a rusty nail and it causes his toes to become infected. Not having extra money, John's stepfather drags him into the woodshed and removes his toes with an axe and burns the wound shut. Despite the fact that he suffers traumatic events daily, John continues to grow into a farmer and successful businessman. The emotional wounds caused by his very practical stepfather are never addressed. So as any wounds left unattended infection set in only these were emotional wounds that formed John's behaviors and perspective in life. All of which he would pass on to his children as normal behaviors and perspective.

John is my maternal Gido (grandfather). My mother and her siblings are his children and I am his grandchild and we are all coated in his unhealed traumas. Fast forward to when I am ten years old and my cousins and I are sitting still and quiet on the edge of the couch while my Gido watches wrestling in silence. Our job was to remain silent until it was our turn to work in the garden or mow the grass. Gido was a large man with hands the size of a small watermelon which he was quick to use across my head if I didn't remain silent while wrestling was on. For me, visiting my grandparents meant walking on egg shells and keeping out of their reach. I became really good at reading the room for any sign of tension on the faces of the adults. There was always tension, which brought on arguing which sometimes lead to us leaving in a rush with me confused and riding in the back seat trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

This normal was also the normal in my house growing up. Unknowingly my parents took the normal they grew to know and used it in our home. Unknowingly I raised my children with a diluted version of that normal. It wasn't until my 50's that I realized that the behaviors that brought me to an explosive career ruin were indeed engrained during that normal upbringing. So I set about healing and changing and tending to the wounds that I had inherited from my mother and her father and probably as far back as time permits. We are kind of like the Matryoshka dolls that fit inside of each other; we are but a smaller version of the same trauma. I need to be clear here, I do not blame my elders. I have grown to understand that they were simply humans surviving harsh conditions and trying their best in a time that did not advocate self healing. As such I can feel nothing but sadness and compassion for their lives.

I live in a very different time in which healing has become a main topic on social media. It is now everyday life to tend to the emotional wounds passed down to us. Unfortunately not everyone in a family comes to this idea at the same time. So it can be quite upsetting for a sibling to wake up and see that another has pulled back the curtain to reveal the family "normal". Believe me when your family normal doesn't reflect wholesome goodness there is always a curtain of bullshit that protects the truth. In his book, It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle,” author Mark Wolynn writes, “Remaining silent about family pain is rarely an effective strategy for healing it. The suffering will surface again at a later time, often expressing in the fears or symptoms of a later generation.” In my family unit people are not particularly happy about my efforts to dissolve the wholesome fairytale. Like I said earlier in other writing, the reason I do this is so that my children can witness me healing my wounds, rewriting our normal and breaking cycles before it moves to the next generation. Along with that I will sit and wait for the ice to crack and push up that beautiful piece of blue for my siblings. Perhaps, with such movement, we can create a safe space of understanding and open dialogue in an effort toward fixing the "normal" broken relationships which we share.

Until then I might strap on my snowshoes on Saturday morning and venture out onto that beautiful blue heaved iceberg and do my best to not create a larger crack in the ice. Not easy work, however, I fully intend to live the rest of my life embracing the dangerous areas around that pressure crack with the intent to inspire others to do the same. For me, over time the crack has become just a beautiful opportunity to bring change to a once barren landscape.